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November 2009

Working on a new London post but meanwhile I had a photo shoot the other day of some of our existing Jelly Roll quilts for a future project....

Anyway, I remembered how much I loved this quilt and the pattern. "Papillon" is a new twist on an old favorite. Reinterpreted as usual to avoid templates!

Thought I would share a few of the shots from the shoot and just wanted to share with you that this pattern is really such a SIMPLE one!

I know I seem to say that a lot [talking to you.... Camille & friends] but I really do mean it. Mostly what I mean, I guess, is that for those of you who avoid some of these traditional patterns because they have always looked complicated, well I'm with you on that!

That is why I always rework the block until I think that most anyone can do it.

Each part of the "fan" is simply a piece of jelly roll strip folded in half lengthwise, sewn together on one end, turned out into a point and placed into a traced piece of template plastic. When the pieces are all assembled, they are sewn to one another along the drawn lines traced from that template... no special piecing, no special template cutting, no special rulers.

It goes together pretty darn quick. I guess that is what I mean by simple!

You can also of course keep going all the way around to make a traditional Dresden Plate block. In fact, we might just be working on such a version ourselves so stay tuned.

I have so much more I want to share from my trip but as I was looking through the hundreds of shots that I took... again.... I found a whole group of wonderful architectural pics of the one of my new favorite strolling neighborhoods of London- Chelsea. A wonderful area filled with charming buildings and wonderful shops. Could have spent an entire weekend just there!

Today, architecture.

Tomorrow, a few of the places I visited while strolling around.<
Talk to you soon.

Having just returned from a business trip to London and Madrid, I am still a bit jet lagged and a little confused as to which language I am supposed to be speaking. I think the best moments were when I started speaking Polish in the middle of teaching a quilt class in Spanish and the moment when I arrived at my great aunt's home [she speaks Polish & English and a host of other languages but certainly not Spanish] & greeted her in a traditional Spanish greeting! Let's just say that I could tell I was saying something wrong by the blank stares on everyone's faces...

Other than the moments of language confusion, it was a wonderful trip but boy am I glad to be home again.

London

My time in London was mostly my own and it was my opportunity to learn and see and explore, getting to know the city a bit better. I wandered around various portions of town that I had never been to before - the theatre district, Chelsea, Soho, Portobello Road, just to name a few. I had never realized that there were so many parts of London with such different "feels". I have a million photos so stay tuned for a series of posts of my voyages....

A Favorite Moment

I had never been to Portobello Road before [the famous antiques street in London] and even though the famed Portobello Market happens only on Saturdays, there are still plenty of fascinating little shops to visit during the rest of the week.

As we strolled through the shops and a few sidewalk stands, I discovered shops full of wonderful purses [that are inspiring many a new purse idea], vintage maps, little trinkets, vintage china, beautifully colorful Indian imports, pottery, but most importantly I found The Cloth Shop...

The Cloth Shop is literally a little hole in the wall fabric store. Perhaps a teeny bit bigger than a hole once you actually walk in through the old fashioned, heavy black door, the store opens up into a room packed with old & new fabrics alike, stacked, propped, bundled and rolled. Their stock includes vintage French tickings & linens and sheets, old British chintz quilts, Indian handwoven cottons and hemps, Hungarian grain sacks, antique silk waistcoat fabrics among others.

We befriended the very knowledgeable storekeepers, Sam & Alex, who told colorful stories about some of their sources and some of the most interesting uses for their products. I purchased 1 1/2 meters of a beautiful peachy cream colored woven Indian cotton fabric called Mangle Cloth . With a fairly loose weave, he recommended washing and drying it in order to transform it from its fairly stiff texture, to a super soft, delicate scarf. He thought 1 1/2 meters would be exactly what I would need in order to wrap it around my shoulders and neck at least once. I am planning on doing just that.

As we were browsing through the "waistcoat" fabrics he told us proudly that not only is one of the only stores in Britain that still carries this particular type of vintage reproduction fabric but that movie producers come to him to get authentic looking prints. He has supplied Star Wars to more recently... Harry Potter with specially produced silk "waistcoat" fabrics in various appropriate prints. A story that not only did we enjoy, but had a great time sharing with our kids when I returned!

You never know what you might find in one of those little hole in the walls. Wouldn't have missed this one for the world.

Oh yeah... as someone just pointed out to me this morning.... one of the munchkins has been in a full leg cast all month! I guess that has added to the general Figueroa festivities just a bit! Thank goodness its our middle offspring... the most mellow of the group!

If you know us personally, feel free to chuckle again about the events surrounding that break!

Just in case you are the one person who hasn't noticed, who hasn't emailed me to see if I am still alive, who hasn't called to see if all is well, who hasn't been wondering if perhaps Market was just too much for us this year... I have been taking a little break from technology lately- no blogging, no tweeting, no flickering, barely even been online at all it seems. I think I have missed all the Market wrap ups this time around.

I guess a little break was due.

Since we returned bleary eyed from market, we have finished a 5 day retail show [the only one we do all year long- pictures coming soon], had 2 visits from my parents, finished up a few of the unfinished patterns for fall, created a few new ones for our next line coming up in summer, worked on a new ad for Where Women Create....

finished a new article for American Quilt Retailer, did a very small amount of garden work, made 5 Halloween costumes, gave out a lot of candy, went to a couple of birthday parties and a memorial service and did a whole lot of cleaning. And then, did some more cleaning.

More importantly I reconnected with my kids, spent some time at a Pumpkin patch, then went to one more just because we could, helped another prep for a part in a local play, been to a bunch of soccer practices and generally spent a lot of time on the couch reading kid's books or on the floor rolling around with or another or all three of the munchkins or beagles. Good times were had by all.

One morning I took some time to stop and watch the plain little sparrows in our garden. Now there is a busy little animal, and beautiful at that...

Design work has been happening at a steady pace around here as we have just sent in our new fall collection and are also working on some wonderful projects with our summer line but the computer thing just somehow hasn't happened at the same pace. It looks like my office gals are finally starting to get caught up, the paperwork has been filed and we are ready for the holidays.

Oh, and I am leaving for London and Madrid next weekend.... I know, I know, poor little me!

Oh well, it all begins again. This is after all the career I have chosen and wouldn't switch for any other and the crazy life that comes with it is just par for the course. I do love it. Just needed a little down time.

JUST SOME QUICK FYIS

All of our brand new patterns are up on our site now, available for sale, even those that aren't quite ready to ship are available for pre-sale. Brand new patterns include:

Jelly & Jam

Sunwashed

Cameos

Amelia & Me

Stanley

Bella

Prairie Rose

A Girl in Paris

Fresh Vintage #14

Whimsy Fresh

To see all of them, go here. We will also be showing more info on each one in the coming weeks so stay tuned.

We have a few kits leftover from the PIQF retail show, but I really mean a few. We made them available to everyone on our email list first [so if you're not already on there, you might want to sign up for future sales- see top right sidebar] and have 1-3 of the following: Posies a la Mode from Fresh Vintage #13, Rosettes, and then a bunch of French Kiss. We made 30 extra kits of this one for an event where we didn't end up needing kits, so we have about 17 of those left at this point.

Posies a la Mode Kit

French Kiss Kit

Papillon Kit

Rosettes Kit

If you are interested in these, click here and click on the "View all kits".

A Bit About Me

copyright 2015

Please feel free to use any fabric or pattern images to help promote and market our products in your shop or blog. If you are interested in using any more personal photos, please email me before using or posting anywhere else. Thank you.